Love Under Glasse

by Kristina Meister

  He finally took off his little hat of authority and clutched it in his white-knuckled hand. “Okay. What?”

  “You’re going to be nice to me. And I’m not going to make that a vague statement, because I know how much you like rules. So what I mean by nice is, you’re going to move on as soon as you’ve finished paying back the money. After that, you’re going to recommend I replace you. And if I need you to cover for me, or look the other way while I take a small vacation or two this summer, you’re going to. Does that make sense?”

  He was nodding, and she could see his visions of a college education had gone behind bars. Riley had to force herself not to break character.

  This little scheme of his was stupid, because the first time that Sam’s accountant took one look at the books, they’d see exactly what she had. What the hell had he been thinking?

  His idiocy, her peace of mind.

  She picked up her computer and propped it on her lap so that he could see the active video feed. “If these things are not carried out to my satisfaction, I will give this recording to the police. My father is getting a copy. You’ve met my father, right? He’s that giant dude who came in here before. Ate a whole tub of Butter Pecan.”

  Russel made a sound that was something like a cross between hiccuping and moaning. Riley leaned forward and looked into his eyes, malevolent joy sparkling in her own reflected gaze.

  “Did you like his knuckle ink? He got that in prison.”

  Russel tipped forward and puked. She had just enough time to jump backward before her boots got covered in the stuff. It was the color of butter and stank like a carnival disaster. Riley collected her laptop and closed the knife.

  “I think the regulations say the floors cannot be wet, or it poses a hazard. Jesus . . . Sam isn’t gonna be happy when I tell him it looked as good coming out as it did in the tin.”

  She left the way she entered, feeling considerably lighter. The computer went into her pack, an abnormal load to carry, but light as air. Nothing could pin her down tonight!

  Riley revved the engine three extra times, and then sped through the summer sunset on the long way home. The air was becoming tolerable and the fireflies were out, winking on and off like Christmas lights. Spirits soaring, she nearly sped by the pale shape that loomed out of the inky tree line. Hitting the brake so hard she almost capsized, Riley swung the bike around.

  El was staring into her headlight like a doe, transfixed, her whole body trembling. Her cardigan sweater was smeared with blood, and she was missing one of her ballet flats.

  Riley took her jacket off in one breath, and tossed it over the girl as if she were on fire. “El . . . what the hell are you doing out here? What happened to you?”

  Her long lashes were heavy with little droplets. She’d been crying all day, it seemed, and that filled Riley with sorrow and more than a little rage.

  “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

  “No, it fucking is not!” Riley walked her back from the road and examined every inch of flesh she could see. “Where did this blood come from? Are you hurt?”

  “No,” the girl whispered, “but he is.”

  “Do I need to call an ambulance?”

  “No. It’s okay. He tried to touch me. I think . . .” El looked blindly into the twinkling air. “I think I broke his nose. I fell out of the car, and he drove away.”

  Holding her at arm’s length, Riley opened and closed her mouth several times. “Who are we talking about?”

  “Jay.”

  “Your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” El hissed.

  Riley made a face. “Well, he sure as hell isn’t anymore. Wait. What!? The. Hell. You fell out of the car? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  El nodded, her face slack.

  “You were just going to walk home?” Riley’s mind was skipping over reality, picking up only bits and pieces, but her heart was beginning to slow. No immediate threats. No emergency situations.

  “Yes.”

  “With one shoe . . . that many miles?”

  The girl turned in place, still ostensibly suffering from some kind of trauma, and proceeded to do just that, shuffling like a zombie. Riley caught her by the arm and gently halted her.

  “I’ll drive you home.”

  “Mama wouldn’t like that.”

  Her voice was completely devoid of emotion, and somehow that was more terrifying than anything else.

  “If you want, I can drop you a little ways from your house and you can walk in, but it’s too far for you with one shoe. Okay? Will you let me do that?”

  As if tendons had been suddenly severed, El slipped toward the ground. Clutching her, Riley half dragged, half carried her to a guard rail and propped her upright like a life-sized plaything.

  “Hey, come on! Don’t faint on me, okay? I know first aid, but holy shit I do not make it a policy to kiss girls via CPR!”

  Tears were glittering in the glow cast by the headlamp, but El’s face was completely blank and emotionless. Compulsively, Riley swept the moisture away with a thumb and gathered the dark hair up off El’s sweaty neck. With one of her elastic bracelets, she secured it in a knot and fanned the girl.

  “Breathe, okay? Can you hear me talking to you?”

  “Yes. My ears work perfectly.”

  “Oh good, because we’ll need to check your software later. Your expressions protocol apparently crashed when you hit the deck.”

  Riley massaged the girl’s arms and legs, just to make sure that nothing was broken. El wasn’t too badly scuffed, so Jay hadn’t pushed her from a fast-moving car, but she was definitely in some kind of shock.

  “Riley, will you . . . if I . . . I . . .”

  Riley looked up. The girl was watching her hands as if they were doing some kind of magic, the trace of a bemused smile on her mouth.

  “What? What do you need? Tell me.”

  Suddenly, the mask shifted, and El was bawling. Before she really knew what she was doing, Riley was holding her, shushing her, petting her back and telling her it was going to be all right. But how could it be all right? Riley didn’t even know what was wrong.

  “It’s okay. We can just stand like this. Let it out. I’m not going anywhere. Relax.”

  El wept like an avalanche, slumping forward until they were both balled up on the ground. Riley was silent, as she tried to make sense and couldn’t, tried to craft a clever response and failed. This vulnerability and complete ineffectual helplessness . . . she hated it. Logic, action, plans—those were her default. She deflected, she fought back, she pushed harder, but there was no force that could overcome despair like this. It had to be received, absorbed, shared. She could only help if she could be passive, and that was so uncomfortable it gave her a stomach ache.

  “Can you tell me anything? It will help, I promise. You just have to trust me.”

  El pushed her away gently, her face streaked with dirt and blood. “I’m just angry. I’m angry and hopeless and . . .”

  Riley breathed a sigh of relief. Anger was something she knew. She could outline its uses easily. “Okay, let’s start there. Why are you angry?”

  “It’s like you said earlier. Everyone wants to control me, define me, and to do that they’re doing all sorts of terrible things.”

  “Okay . . . that makes sense to me. Who do you want to be, by the way? Because if you were aiming for the Walking Dead aesthetic, you’re there. You’re lucky I didn’t bring Matilda with me.”

  El frowned and stared at her vaguely. “Who’s Matilda . . . is she . . . your girlfriend?”

  “She’s my rifle.”

  The laugh had returned, sharp and uneven, snagging the air, but at least El had stopped crying. “Of course, you have a rifle.”

  “So, what are you going to do about how angry you feel? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for clocking uppity dude-bros in the puss, but you need more than that, or you’re just gonna get arrested. You need to make things happen for you, the way you
want them.”

  The girl was once again staring into the distance as if listening to something very far away. “I can’t fight her. She’s bigger and stronger than me. I can’t go that route.”

  “That sounds legit.” Riley carefully coaxed her to her feet and guided her slowly to the side of the bike, the hand fitting warmly in hers. “But sometimes the best way to fight is to bend.”

  “Bend?”

  Taking the helmet from the ground where she’d dropped it, Riley held it up. “Your mom is rigid. The world is obviously way bigger and more complex than she is willing to accept, and so she tries to force it into submission, shout it down.” El seemed to be wholly mesmerized by this notion, such that she didn’t even appear to notice the head gear dropped on top of her. Riley tucked her skinny arms into the sleeves of the protective leather coat. “Because of that she has to fight the whole world, all the time, but you’re flexible. You have loads of options, because you can think in a way that she can’t, and you only have the one enemy. Her.”

  The sound of the zipper awakened the girl from hypnosis. “But . . . if I wear this, you won’t have one.”

  “I’m good. I was conceived on a bike.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, no shit. Lemme tell you—how they did it, I don’t know, because the kickstands aren't that sturdy, but my dad swears it’s true. I have a baby picture of him wearing me in one of those papoose things, sitting on a hog.”

  “A . . . a hog? That . . . that’s a motorcycle, right?”

  Riley snorted. “Yeah.”

  The waif in her dark armor looked comically small, her eyes huge in astonishment. “But that’s not safe!”

  Taking hold of the shiny orb, Riley dipped her forehead to the faceplate and stared into El’s saucer eyes. The girl went absolutely still, her lips parted as if to gasp.

  “I am going to be okay. Now please get on. Just put your leg over.”

  “That’s unladylike.”

  “Your mama tell you that?” Riley started the bike in a blast of sound. “Then yeah, I certainly fucking hope so.”

  All the way to the neighborhood of rolling grass and miniature castles, El clutched Riley around the middle. Worried the bike ride would only damage the traumatized girl even further, Riley prepared to comfort her as soon as they stopped, but at the corner El indicated, the helmet was removed, and the girl was grinning broadly.

  Riley felt a wave of relief pass over her. Bikes were another fact of her existence. If El had been afraid, she wasn’t sure she could continue to call her a friend or anything else. Unzipping the coat, she winked at the slowly reviving mannequin. “Now see? You’ve cheered up!”

  “That was . . . fun. Scary! But fun.”

  “Like flying.”

  El nodded and shrugged out of the coat. Her hands found their way back to each other and continued their constant fidgeting. The eyes returned to her one naked foot. “Thank you for bringing me home. I’m sorry it had to . . . happen this way. I won’t get in your way . . . anymore.”

  She began to leave, and perhaps Riley should have let her, but she wanted to keep this . . . whatever it was. She wanted to encourage the poor girl. She wanted a few more moments. She wanted something else.

  Because something about El felt . . . really nice.

  “I’ve been thinking about your problem.”

  El turned. In the streetlamp she lit up in a weird golden haze. “Which one?”

  “Your mom. Her finding out about your secret. You should figure out how she found out. That’s the weakness in your defenses, see?” Riley put down the kickstand and set the helmet on the seat. “You need to act as if everything is completely normal, so that she doesn’t know you know she knows, but you gotta find out how she knew. Wow . . . that sounded really stupid.”

  The girl granted her a sleepy smile. “I understand.”

  “So for now, business as usual, while we solve the problem. I mean, it would help if I knew what we’re talking about, because I’m pretty good with this sort of thing. The whole scheming thing.”

  “No!”

  Riley cringed. They’d only just begun speaking, and she’d already invaded El’s privacy and said something really bossy.

  “Yeah, sorry, I’m nosy, remember?”

  But El was already backing away. “It’s not like that. It’s just . . . you don’t know my mother. If she knew you were involved, she’d hurt you too. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

  Those words had a promise to them, as depressing as they were. Riley tilted her head and couldn’t help an off-kilter grin. “Your mom doesn’t scare me.”

  As El vanished into the shadows draping over a stone wall, she chuckled. “Nothing scares you, Riley.”

  “That’s not true. Have you ever seen a hairless cat? Those things look like they were pinched off the Devil’s ballsack! It’s unnatural.”

  The low music of El’s laugh carried through the night and congratulated Riley on a mission well accomplished.

  All Saturday morning, El sat on the foot of her pink bed, in her rosy room, and waited for the world to end in a blush-colored haze. Her mind could not hold tightly to any one thought, flitting nervously from the dire politics of the house, to the feeling of holding Riley, to the shout Jay had made as he saw his own blood, to the smell of rainbow-colored hair. She twisted her hands and listened for her mother’s familiar footfalls, twisted her skirt and held her breath.

  She twisted her heart and her mind and still couldn’t fit in.

  Any moment, her mother would arrive outside her door and demand to know why she had punched Jay in the face, and she’d have to talk about sex. Her mother would know she was not being truthful, but she would have to pretend as if she had no idea. How could she do that, when all she wanted was to scream and demand to know why her mother couldn’t love her?

  Around noon, El heard her name echoing off every smooth, uncluttered surface. Certain it was the death knell, she clung to the last image in her mind, of Riley grinning in the darkness with a twinkle in her eye.

  She felt it then, as she trudged down the stairs to the parlor—that specific pang that heralded one of her online venting sessions. She needed to talk about last night. She wanted so badly to tell the world how the girl had touched her, that Riley was intelligent and funny, that there was even more beauty up close than there was from a distance, but El would never have that chance. It was impossible.

  “Don’t drag your feet!”

  Swallowing, El watched the platform sandals dance across the shining floor as Mama gathered items into a bag. The woman was gussied up, wearing her best pearls and a vintage revival dress. A person could have cut her out of this decade and put her back in the fifties with only a single dilemma—the smartphone in her hand.

  “Yes, Mama?” El hazarded.

  “Speak up! Why are you always mumbling?”

  El didn’t bother to comment that if she spoke in her normal voice, her mother either told her it was too deep or too loud. She often settled on not speaking at all, but this meant she was accused of being secretive or shy. If she talked about banal things, she was flighty, and if about meaningful things, she was being unladylike or impractically intellectual. It took more energy than El ever had to do everything right.

  Not for the first time, she wished she could be normal, or whatever it was her mother wanted her to be, just so that it would all stop, and she could finally rest. She was just so tired.

  But that magic, if possible, would come at a cost. She wouldn’t feel what she felt when she looked at Riley, and that was simply unacceptable.

  Exhaustion it was.

  “Your sister’s gonna be here any minute. We’re goin’ over to McKayla’s for cake tasting. I would invite you, but you’re not exactly the sort.”

  Torn between wondering what that meant and feeling overjoyed that Jay wasn’t mentioned, El settled for, “I eat cake.”

  Her mother made a face as if smelling something disgusting.
“We’re not goin’ to eat cake. We are goin’ to taste cake. Your sister wants five tiers and plain white, but I swear that girl never did have an aesthetic eye. I told her, ‘Your colors are lavender and turquoise, not white! You oughtta have somethin’ . . . I dunno, airbrushed or somethin’.’ And I am absolutely right. Everything is gonna be too white.”

  Mama always pronounced the h of wh words like it was the most important part. It made questions and discussions of color as uncomfortable as she intended. Like she couldn’t stand when her privileges were questioned or when things remained silent. If there was some layer of subtlety, she’d reduce it, and if there was a tiny secret to be had, Mama would suss it out and turn it into torture.

  “I read somewhere . . . that edible flowers are really popular, and maybe McKayla can make the frosting lavender or maybe rose flavored to play with her name . . . you know?”

  Her mother stopped abruptly in her tracks. For a moment, El waited for the “artistic” axe to fall.

  “When did you start learnin’ about cakes?”

  “When Rose got engaged.” She shrugged. “I thought it might help if I knew things, since she wants me to be in the wedding and all.”

  She made no mention of her tiny, impersonal role in the ceremony, or the hideous dress, or that she hated everyone who would be there, or that it was all just an excuse to spend a lot of money, impress important people, and ignore the fact that Rose and Tom would be trying to hire hitmen within the decade. Instead, El put on her usual vague smile and fondled one of ten cake toppers from the table.

  The woman frowned. Not the light frown of introspection, but the scowl of judgment. “I don’t think she will need your help with that sort of thing, sugar. I have that covered. You just focus on learnin’ how to walk in your high heels and not spillin’ all over yourself when you eat.”

  El bowed her head, grateful she’d taken the time to toss her ruined cardigan into the garbage can before she snuck back in last night. Her mother inventoried her clothes, but she could easily say it was at school somewhere.